From: Russet McMillan Subject: 3.5m Night Log 20030129 Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2003 06:41:08 -0700 (MST) Apache Point Observatory 3.5m Telescope Night Log Wednesday, January 29, 2003 ACTUAL ASTRONOMER OBSERVER(S) INSTRUMENT START FINISH ------------------------------------------------------------------- D.Bowen D.Bowen,B.Frye DISII.5 18:17 23:50 B.Pindor B.Pindor Spicam 00:10 06:05 INST SCHEDULED WEATH EQUIP OBS DAY NOTUSED I/RO/DN START FINISH D B D B D B USE D B -------------------------------------------------------------------- PU03/R 18:29 00:00 0 0 1.5 0 4.0 0 0 0 0 PU01/R 00:00 06:04 0 0 0 0 5.9 0.2 0 0 0 note: scheduled times listed include instrument change time ------------- ACTIVITY LOG -------------- 1st half Observing Specialist: W.Ketzeback The evening started out well enough, with some minor problems to the weather monitor and dis instrument control computer that Craig Loomis chased down quickly. The observers logged on and were done with cals by 18:45 when I opened. Focus went well but things rapidly became a unfortunate list of difficulties from there. The observers could not use the dis testview or slitview because they claimed there was not a 8 bit display in the Princeton controlroom. Before tackling this problem I suggested I get them centered on the slit and get their first integration going. So while I had Craig Loomis on the phone waiting for this to happen I attempted to center their object on the slit. After a short while and several iterations (the offsets in the testview program are plain wrong they overshoot the slit!) I was centered but the observers decided that they could get more of their galaxy in the slit if they rotated the instrument. After the rotation I just could not get the offsets to behave properly. At this point I said goodbye to Craig and called Russet. She had me do a pointing correction and zero the guider offsets. Amazingly, I was then able to get their object on the slit (an hour and a half after first attempt) and they started an exposure. Russet also suspected a communications problem and had me restart the mc. However, restarting the mc seemed to have ruined their exposure and stopped the disicc. Getting this back up and running, we again centered their object and got back to doing science. The last 2 hours of the evening went fine. 2nd half Observing Specialist: R.McMillan Second half remained mostly clear aside from a cloud system skimming the eastern horizon, away from the portions of the sky we were observing. Seeing was variable, ranging from about 0.7 to 1.5 arcseconds. Frequent temperature changes, though not large, made it necessary to pursue focus aggressively. ------- FAILURE LOG ------- PROG INST FAILURE MODE TIME (SEGDFVO) TI/SHU START FINISH DESCRIPTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PU03 D T/S 20:10 21:00 Offsets + rotation behaved badly PU03 D I/S 21:00 21:40 mc restart aborted exposure ---------------- FOCUS LOG --------------- Air/Truss Wind Time Instrument Focus Az El Temp-C Dir MPH filt FWHM --------------------------------------------------------------------- 19:08 dis-slit -275(319) 20 47 3.1/4.4 359 11 - 0.98 19:10 NA2gdr -31(40968) 20 47 3.1/4.4 12 11 R 0.94 00:22 SPIcam -50(667) 15 66 3.4/2.7 312 12 g' 0.76 00:24 NA2gdr 1108(50108) 15 66 3.2/2.7 303 13 R 0.89 --------------- WEATHER LOG ---------------- Wind Precip.or Time Temp F Dewp F MPH Direction Dust Sky Conditions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 16:01 41 15 4 7 (N) 237 clear none 17:01 38 15 7 349 (NNW) 263 clear none 18:01 37 14 11 349 (NNW) 240 clear none 19:01 38 11 12 1 (N) 180 clear none 20:01 37 13 7 2 (N) 169 clear none 21:01 38 12 2 358 (N) 139 mstly cldy none 22:01 38 14 7 359 (N) 181 prtly cldy none 23:01 38 14 9 316 (NW) 173 clear none 00:01 38 13 11 323 (NW) 172 clear none 01:01 38 12 12 302 (WNW) 172 clear none 02:01 37 13 6 302 (WNW) 207 mstly clr none 03:01 36 12 13 327 (NNW) 266 mstly clr none 04:01 37 12 6 350 (N) 295 clear none 05:01 36 12 8 327 (NNW) 319 clear none 06:01 37 12 8 356 (N) 247 clear none Note: the wind was coming from the azimuth listed. The convention used is north=0 degrees, east=90 degrees. The dust count is particles > 1u per 0.1 cubic feet. TELESCOPE STATUS Primary, secondary, and tertiary mirrors in place and collimated. Primary support system operational. Mirror ventilation system in place. Telescope drives operational. Current Remark version: 2.82 Current guide software version: GIm Ctrlv4.1b2 Current TCC version: 2.6.8